7 November 2019
Bus rapid transit
Taking the BRT to dinner
It is raining a bit, so instead of walking to the station I took the BRT. I have now studied what the BRT is, it is a bus that goes every 3 minutes along a bus route. It uses normal roads. This is not a BRT. Other parts of the world have a BRT, in those places its at least a dedicated lane, and often an entirely separate elevated or underground road without any traffic lights. Here in Niigata, its a bus painted red.
Regardless of the false advertising of the BRT, it does come often and takes me to the station to avoid the rain.
Once in the vicinity of the station, I paced around briefly as it started to rain and took some photos of men fleeing to not be in my photos. So forget what the internet says, the red light district of Niigata is no longer at Furumachi, its at the station. Everything is at the station.
I know I keep going on about red light districts a lot, but in Japan that is where the people, shops and restaurants all are. They are the brightest, busiest and most interesting parts of town. It does look weird to me when you see men and women who appear to work together, in their blue suits carrying old fashioned briefcases, staggering around at 8pm in and out of girly bars together. Just like Australia, its the only way to get the BIG PROMOTION. The key to business success everywhere is to know stuff about your boss that he doesnt want everyone to know. Dont ask dont tell? #metoo, #mentoo, OK BOOMER! OK ZOOMER!! #greta! SMH.
This is an establishment where people fled in terror as I positioned myself to take a photo.
Here is an older style restaurant. Smoky meat on skewers place like most places around here.
I dont know what was being cooked inside here, but it was very rustic looking. And by rustic I mean, probably rat infested.
One of the colorful streets near the station. There are a few on both sides of the station.
For my dinner, I had Xiao Long Bao in soup. Chinese food. Pretty good. The soup buns were quite authentic, they definitely had soup in them as well as pork, so yeah, soup filled buns in soup.
This company came to Australia for a while. For an unknown reason they chose Adelaide as their launch location. They lasted there longer than any of their other locations, but unfortunately the Adelaide one burnt down and they have not opened anywhere since. I thought of having one to reminisce, but no, I had a banana instead.